Monday, July 24, 2017

An important message was delivered to Sri Lanka’s policymakers and bastions in the tea industry by five experts who participated in a live TV discussion on the subject recently (available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyUT_YEG5mU ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL3mYE5rXIw&t=221s and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3p415x4C1w). The message was that the industry was going through a crisis, it needed a long-term vision and it was time for everyone to give up their pet ideology based on ‘thinking local and acting global’. What was observed was that everyone was savouring ‘small gains’ in the form of temporary increases in prices which were nothing but bubbles that almost immediately burst.